I imagine I could ask all the questions I want, but I'll just hear what they want to say to sell the thing and then I could be stuck with a lemon. True or am I being too pessimistic? Just trust the feedback and get over it?

Is it really just a gamble based on looking at pictures? Speaking of, what's normal back-of-neck wear? Specifically, what am I looking at here:

This looks pretty typical for vintage necks on ebay, as far as I can tell. It's not shown on bass, several nicks, etc. This guy's sold a couple similar necks before and got positive "just as described" feedback. It's a good deal cheaper than a lot of 70's necks I've seen, which could mean anything...

Tough to tell without holding it. As for the scrape, an hour of sanding and an hour of oiling should take care of that. I would want to see a pic of the neck length-wise to see what the relief looks like, to bad there's no pics of it at full tension.

Thanks the tip on fixing the wear spot. I was hoping something like that would work.

I slept on it and am gonna go for it. Maple boards don't come up too often. The description covers all concerns -- even if there aren't the best pics -- so there is some legitimacy for a return/dispute. Worst case, I could flip it and lose maybe half the cost, and that's fine with me. Anyway, I'm optimistic

Welp, got it today! At first look, it's dead straight with no twist. Score. That spot in the pic above is more indented than I was expecting/hoping. Might need a bit more elbow grease to flush out. I think one of the tuner holes was bored out slightly. Or maybe these old ones are just like that. And the tuner screw holes look like newer tuners were installed at some point. The frets could be cleaned up some (feels like it came from upstate New York in the winter, which it did).

A few more "heavy" wear items (mojo? ), but all in all about what I was expecting. I'll take it to my repair guy for a final check, but barring a problem there, it's a keeper!

how easy is the truss rod to turn? does it push the neck into backbow without too much cranking?

as for that blem, i dunno about "sanding and oiling"; seems to me that if you did anything at all to it, you'd want to (after cleaning the wood as much as you can with naphtha or whatever) look into filling it with a hard gap-filling finish, superglue maybe, to get it flush with the rest of the gloss. at that point, scraping, sanding and buffing should make it one with the overall finish again, to where you don't feel it while playing.

Welp, got it today! At first look, it's dead straight with no twist. Score. That spot in the pic above is more indented than I was expecting/hoping. Might need a bit more elbow grease to flush out. I think one of the tuner holes was bored out slightly. Or maybe these old ones are just like that. And the tuner screw holes look like newer tuners were installed at some point. The frets could be cleaned up some (feels like it came from upstate New York in the winter, which it did).

A few more "heavy" wear items (mojo? ), but all in all about what I was expecting. I'll take it to my repair guy for a final check, but barring a problem there, it's a keeper!

Click to expand...

fwiw, you bought it from a tb'r who buys stuff and parts it out, so its not like he put any of the wear on there.

Popped into the tech's over lunch. Clean bill of health! Well, again relative to it's age and as far as he can tell without putting it on a bass and stringing it up. But truss rod is functioning and he didn't see any cracks/structural problems, which is the big thing.

how easy is the truss rod to turn? does it push the neck into backbow without too much cranking?

as for that blem, i dunno about "sanding and oiling"; seems to me that if you did anything at all to it, you'd want to (after cleaning the wood as much as you can with naphtha or whatever) look into filling it with a hard gap-filling finish, superglue maybe, to get it flush with the rest of the gloss. at that point, scraping, sanding and buffing should make it one with the overall finish again, to where you don't feel it while playing.